నైరూప్య

A reliable and accurate system of joint position sense measurement

Rabiya Noor, Gholamreza Olyaei, Mohammad Reza Hadian, Saeed Talebian, Muhammad Salman Bashir

Objective: Measurement of range of motion is used to measure the joint Position Sense (JPS). The objective of this study was to give an easy and less costly method of measuring JPS.

Methods: The study conducted at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, in Iran in May 2017. In this study researcher used the system of digital photographs, non-reflective markers and software for measuring the accuracy and reliability. The fixed arm of the goniometer was horizontal. The moveable arm was positioned at the 15° initially and then selected it at different degrees (30, 45, 60 and 75) randomly. 5 reference angles were selected from 15° to 75°. By using moving arm three photos were taken from each angle. Reliability and validity of measurement for each angle was disclosed by utilizing T-test, correlation (reliability test) and R square of regression (validity test). Also relative and absolute error is used to evaluate the accuracy of this method.

Results: Results showed that mean (R^2) for validity is 0.99, T-test p-value for reliability is 0.41 it means there is no significant difference between these methods and for correlation (reliability) mean value was 0.97 and averages of absolute error and relative error were (-0.44 and 0.62) respectively.

Conclusion: It was disclosed that method comprising of digital photography non-reflective markers showed similar results as compared to goniometer in terms of reliability, validity and accuracy of this method. In conclusion, it was a novel approach to measure JPS with salient features of user friendly, fast, less expensive, accurate and reliable.